Last Bus to Woodstock: Inspector Morse Mysteries, Book 1

The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of willful murder, sexual assault and rape. But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key....

Faceless Killers: An Inspector Wallander Mystery

One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, both victims of a violence beyond reason. Wallander's life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, and even his ageing father barely tolerates him.

The Return of the Dancing Master

Herbert Molin, a retired police officer, lives alone in a remote cottage in northern Sweden. Two things seem to consume him; his passion for the tango, and an obsession with the "demons" he believes to be pursuing him. Early one morning shots shatter Molin's window- by the time his body is found it is almost unrecognisable. Stefan Lindman is another off-the-job police officer.

Babylon Berlin: Gereon Rath, Book 1

Berlin, 1929. Detective Inspector Rath was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He has been transferred to the vice squad in Berlin, a job he detests even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter. There is seething unrest in the city, and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the vice squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations.

The Martin Beck Stories: 10 BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations

The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever written. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö between 1965 and 1975, the 10-book series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction. Long before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working with a motley collection of colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden's liberal society.

Pietr the Latvian: Inspector Maigret, Book 1

The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (Dramatised): Martin Beck, Book 2

The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever written. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandanavian crime fiction. In The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, adapted from the second book, a journalist has vanished in Budapest. When Beck arrives in the city to investigate, he is drawn into the Eastern European underworld. Before long his team back in Sweden begin to make some connections....

Knots and Crosses

'And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you...?' 'That sort of thing' is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls. And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spirited away south by his disenchanted wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer.

Jar City

A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. There are no obvious clues apart from a cryptic note left on the body and a photograph of a young girl's grave. Delving into the dead man's life Detective Erlendur discovers that 40 years ago he was accused of an appalling crime, but never convicted. Had his past come back to haunt him? As Erlendur struggles to build a relationship with his unhappy daughter, his investigation takes him to Iceland's Genetic Research Centre, where he uncovers disturbing secrets that are even darker than the murder of an old man.

Mercy: Department Q, Book 1

The unabridged, digital audiobook edition of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy, Scandinavia’s new bestselling crime phenomenon. Read by the actor Steven Pacey. At first the prisoner scratches at the walls until her fingers bleed. But there is no escaping the room. With no way of measuring time, her days, weeks, months go unrecorded. She vows not to go mad. She will not give her captors the satisfaction.

Snowblind: Dark Iceland

Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors - accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik - with a past that he’s unable to leave behind.

Something Wicked: Andrew Hunter, Book 1

Nicholas Carr disappeared on his 18th birthday and the world has moved on. His girlfriend has gone to university, his friends have got jobs, the police have other things to look into. But his father, Richard, is still stuck on the three fingers the police dug up from a sodden Manchester wood. What happened to Nicholas on the night he disappeared, and why did he never come home? Private investigator Andrew Hunter is Nicholas's last hope.

The Blood Strand: Foroyar Triology, Book 1

Jan Reyna is a murder squad detective, British by adoption and choice, Faroese by birth and history. Called back to the remote Danish Faroe Islands when his father suffers a paralysing stroke, Reyna is forced to reexamine his decades-long rejection of the past and of his father in particular. But in this now-foreign country, whose language and customs he no longer understands, Reyna is also drawn into a rare Faroese murder case.

The Crossing Places

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.

The Russia House

It is the third summer of perestroika. Niki Landau, philanderer and travelling rep, attends the first Moscow audio fair and is asked by beautiful young Katya to take a parcel back to England. It’s addressed to Barley Blair, jazz-player and drinker, and contains information vital to the defence of the West. But times and heroes are changing. And Barley Blair is a man who makes his own rules of engagement.

The Secret of Annexe 3: Inspector Morse Mysteries, Book 7

Chief Inspector Morse seldom allowed himself to be caught up in New Year celebrations. So the murder inquiry in the festive hotel had a certain appeal. It was a crime worthy of the season. The corpse was still in fancy dress. And hardly a single guest at the Haworth had registered under a genuine name....

The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers, Dickens's first novel, is a delightful romp through the pre-Reform Bill England of 1827. Samuel Pickwick and the rest of the Pickwickians are some of the most memorable of all Dickens's creations, and it is a joy to hear of their adventures in search of "interesting scenes and characters", and the repeated efforts of the quick-witted Sam Weller to rescue them all from disaster.

Horse Under Water

The dead hand of a long-defeated Nazi Third Reich reaches out to Portugal, London and Marrakech in Deighton's second novel, featuring the same anonymous narrator and milieu of The Ipcress File, but finds Dawlish now head of the secret British Intelligence unit, WOOC(P). The detail is frightening but unfaultable; the story as up to date as ever it was. The un-named hero of The Ipcress File the same: Insolent, fallible, capricious - in other words, human.

The Crow Girl

It starts with just one body - tortured, mummified and then discarded. Its discovery reveals a nightmare world of hidden lives. Of lost identities, secret rituals and brutal exploitation, where nobody can be trusted. This is the darkest, most complex case the police have ever seen. This is the world of the Crow Girl.

Slow Horses: Slough House, Book 1

Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.

Winter: A Berlin Family, 1899-1945

Epic prelude to the classic spy trilogy Game, Set and Match that follows the fortunes of a German dynasty during two world wars. Winter takes us into a large and complex family drama, into the lives of two German brothers - both born close upon the turn of the century, both so caught up in the currents of history that their story is one with the story of their country, from the Kaiser's heyday through Hitler's rise and fall.

Funeral in Berlin

A ferociously cool Cold War thriller from the author of The Ipcress File. Len Deighton's third novel has become a classic, as compelling and suspenseful now as when it first exploded on to the best seller lists. In Berlin, where neither side of the wall is safe, Colonel Stok of Red Army Security is prepared to sell an important Russian scientist to the West - for a price....

The Bat: A Harry Hole Thriller, Book 1

Harry is out of his depth. Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can. He's not supposed to get too involved. When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will talk only to Harry. He might just be the next victim.

Mermaids Singing

Up until now the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different - this one’s on the loose. Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills, where he has to use every ounce of his professional nerve to survive.

S. Christie says:"Good ( if a little too gory) book but terrible narration"

Publisher's Summary

On a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vättern. Three months later, all that Police Inspector Martin Beck knows is that her name is Roseanna, that she came from Lincoln, Nebraska, and that she could have been strangled by any one of 85 people.

As the melancholic Beck narrows down the list of likely suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveller with a penchant for the casual sexual encounter, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive - indeed, terrifying - sense of propriety.

With its authentically rendered settings, vividly realized characters, and command over the intricately interwoven details of police detection, Roseanna is a masterpiece of suspense and sadness.

I really should have used the sample arrow: I found Tom Weiner's delivery irritating I'm afraid, which overcame any interest in the characters. or plot. I hit the delete button and am just grateful that I only bought the first Martin Beck novel, rather than the whole set.

This is the first disappointing Audible purchase but I did learn a lesson.

The reader of this book makes it completely unnlistenable. Its an awful voice, much to fast and therefore very difficult to follow, and as the voice and accent prevent you wanting to. I struggled but couldn't cope for more than 10 minutes.

I think this is a book that would read better than when listening to it. I found the numerous interviews with just the interviewee's initials in front very boring due to the repetition. The narrator doesn't liven things up at all. It is true that the book hasn't really aged (apart from not having any mobile phones in it and everyone smoking inside offices) but it just didn't hold my interest all the way through which is rare, especially for a book so short.

A great book can be ruined by the wrong narrator and this is a perfect example. With ten books in the series all read by the same reader, the publishers have made quite an investment a narrator who seems unable to create any atmosphere or nuance rendering the end product dull and unlistenable. For this reason I'm afraid I can't comment on the content.

Would you consider the audio edition of Roseanna to be better than the print version?

This is a great novel. I infinitely prefer audio books because I no longer have the time to 'read' books. From previous reviews one gets the impression that this may be a slow moving book because the emphasis is on how long it takes to solve a murder, that it is not all solved in an hour, or a week. But actually this is a great story, and the length of time it takes to solve does not detract from that!

What other book might you compare Roseanna to, and why?

If you like Peter James' 'Roy Grace' novels, then you may well enjoy this. It is almost a Swedish equivalent!

Did Tom Weiner do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

I have also listened to audiobooks by other Scandinavian authors, including Jussi Adler-Olsen, which I highly recommend, both for the storylines themselves and also because the narrator - Steven Pacey - puts so much life and character into the characters which, unfortunately, Tom Weiner does not do.

I note that he narrates all of the novels in this series and therefore I may not listen to the others, I think I'd rather read them. This is a shame because I do not get the opportunity to read as often as I'd like, so I may never get around to these. Mr Weiner has an unfortunate tone of voice and it is hard to distinguish between his characters. He has a very limited inflection range and at the beginning of the story, one gets the impression that the narration is all monotonal! It isn't, but it feels that way to begin with.

My advice: Play the sample first to decide if you can put up with his tone. If you can, then you'll enjoy this novel immensely!

Not one to be pernickety, but the speed of the narrator plus his endless characters voices makes this book almost impossible to listen, this is a shame as the content is of the highest quality, I shall just have to wait until Sean Barrett has a go at it.

Would you consider the audio edition of Roseanna to be better than the print version?

Detective fiction pared back to its simplest elements yet absolutely gripping plot. We have another depressed Scandinavian cop but this would be the original as it dates back to the mid 60s before mobile phones or any kind of modern technology. How refreshing!

What other book might you compare Roseanna to and why?

The girl with the dragon tattoo - similar methods used

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Anniebligh

NSW, Australia

25/07/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"A good Listen"

A sincere 'thank you' to Audible for producing this series and to who ever suggested they do so.. What I like most about European Crime Writers starts here.

Personally I may have prefered a more neutral voice to Tom Weiner as the story is European and the 'American' voice jars a little at times. To his great credit though he does capture the mood very well. There is the dry intensity and routine of Crime Investigation that Weiner does capture while still giving glimpses of the investigators' humanity.

This was written before the mobile phone and the pc. People are still sending letters and using phone boxes.. Published in 1965. For a few hours I was a happy couch potato as I became immersed in the unfolding of this story and had the 'close the windows. lock the doors' response to a good thriller. This was the 1960's.

There does not seem to be a wasted word anywhere.

Hennig Mankell gives an excellent introduction to the authors, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and the relevance they have to the European Crime Writers who came after them.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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